


now that i am found

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, F/M, Female Bucky Barnes, Flashbacks, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 13:59:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2814494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The progression of Jemma Buchanan Barnes to the Winter Soldier and back again. (Or, the one where Steve Rogers is a stubborn son of a bitch, his friends are long-sufferingly supportive, and Sam Wilson is generally amazing.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. mountains that are stacked with fear

**Author's Note:**

> just so you know: in this story, bucky is a girl that posed as a boy to join the army. other than that, her story is the same. this takes place after the winter soldier. she's very confused, so half the time she's thinking that she's somewhere else- back in the forties, or with schmidt, or with hydra.
> 
> oh, and i don't speak russian at all, so i've relied on google for the small bits in this; please, if any of you know russian, feel free to comment and help me out a bit.
> 
> edit: hey yo this is a repost of the series queen and lionheart yes that is all

The first thing she knows is warmth.

Her name is Jemma, but they call her Bucky as they fuss over her, bustling in their pale blue scrubs; all but one. He is dark and cocky and full of quips, and he makes several puns in the first minutes she's awake, grinning at his own wittiness (until she slaps him with her flesh-and-blood arm, too weak to even form a fist).

"Stevie," she slurs as he splutters. "G'way, Stark, where's Stevie?" He splutters some more but gestures at the door, and the moment it's open someone is pushing the nurses and doctors away.

"Bucky," he says urgently, resting his elbows on the edge of the bed, and as Bucky looks at him, the sterile hospital gives way to a small tent on the corner of nowhere.

"Stevie," she says, her words slow, running together. "Though' you were smaller." He chokes on a smile, touching her good hand gingerly. And then Stark is there again, for once serious.

"She's having flashbacks," he says, not attempting to pull Steve away. "Thinks she's back in the forties. It'll happen frequently as she recovers." He frowns, faintly puzzled. "Although she seems to know who I am."

Steve looks up at the man and allows himself a tiny, amused smile before looking back at Bucky. "He's Stark all right, just a different brand than Howard," he says. "Trust me, Buck." Then something heavy and black swallows Bucky's vision, and she feels her hand go limp beneath Steve's. She sleeps.

 

Bucky's eyes flutter open, and she feels something cold and hard under her. It all returns to her. _Schmidt_.

"Fuck," she says, shifting, and again, " _Fuck_." Steve'll come, she thinks, but her secret- Schmidt and Zola, they must know by now. And once Phillips knows...

She'd like to believe that he'd disregard it- she is, after all, one of his best snipers- but Jemma Buchanan Barnes doesn't believe in lying, not to herself. The colonel would give her his "it's illegal to falsify your enlistment form, goddammit, I thought even you knew better" speech and send her back to Brooklyn with his regards.

Bucky tries to sit up, surprised to find that it doesn't hurt. And then the hard table underneath her _changes_ , into a soft white bed, sheets tangled around her legs. And her arm- her arm is not her own, it's cold and metal and unfeeling- she screams-

There's someone standing over her, someone unfamiliar; blonde and ruggedly handsome, dirt and blood smudging his arms and dark clothing. She doesn't know what's happening, who he is- she screams again, fingers itching to grab the man in black by the throat and squeeze, and indeed she's moving towards him when he calls for someone.

Hurrying footsteps approach in no time at all, and before Bucky can think any more, the dreaded darkness comes for her again, and she sleeps.

 

The next time she wakes up, it's years later, and someone is sitting beside her bed, slouched and asleep. Panic rises in Bucky's throat, and a snatch of a memory returns to her; screams, her own, and pain, deafening excruciating pain.

"NO!" she shouts, pushing wildly at the figure. "Убирайся к черту от меня," she spits, and it is only when he raises his head, startled, when she realizes that he's not Zola. "No," she whispers again. She doesn't recognize him; dark, with closely cropped black hair and a faintly alarmed expression. If he isn't Zola, then he's working for Zola, working for Hydra, and anyone that is working for Hydra is Bucky's enemy.

(A thought, always at the back of her mind, jumps unbidden- she works for Hydra, now, doesn't she. And what does that make her?)

The man opens his mouth to yell, but before he can get the sound out, Bucky's jumping out of bed, revelling in the way her muscles obey her every thought, and shoving him to the floor, her metal hand pressing over his mouth with bruising force. He makes a few muffled sounds, eyes clearly terrified, but he doesn't struggle, which she finds odd.

"Скажи мне," she growls, "у кого Вы работаете?" Her grip lessens, just a hair, to let him speak.

"I don't-" he gasps in English, still not struggling, and then he yells, "STEVE!"

Bucky's about to clamp her hands around his neck like a vise, the actions easy and practiced, but pauses, concentrating- _she knows that name_. "Steve?" she tries, the name oddly familiar in her mouth.

There are pounding footsteps in the hall, and the door slams open. "Steve," she repeats, eyes wide, "no-"

The black takes her again, and this time she embraces it.

She sleeps.


	2. the sea that's painted black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wakes back in the soft bed.
> 
> Or, the one where dreams are the key, and awkward teenaged interns are vaguely helpful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, i don't speak polish, so i apologize profusely for the polish bits cause i'm bad with languages.

### Work Text:

She wakes back in the soft bed.

She keeps her eyes shut tight against the light, just in case, listening hard for something- anything- that signals the arrival of the technicians that might- that will- come for her. Carefully, warily, she lets her eyes blink open, and the room is neat and white and she's tempted to scream again but she doesn't. She doesn't.

Time passes, she doesn't know how long, and she doesn't move a muscle. _Follow orders_ , those are the words ingrained into her mind, and she's determined to obey.

Someone comes, a young man. He asks questions in a vaguely kind tone and marks things on a clipboard, and in turn she avoids her eyes and says nothing. The man leaves, and she is relieved, but he returns with others; a man with short dark hair, and a taller blonde one. Something flickers in Bucky's mind at the sight of the latter's concerned face, but she tamps down on it firmly. _They'll know. They always know_.

"Bucky," the blonde one says, and she doesn't answer, not sure if this is a trap or not. He repeats it, and this time it sparks. Bucky. Who is Bucky?

Bucky is _me_ , she remembers suddenly. I am Bucky, I have to remember.

There are more questions, but still Bucky says nothing. Bucky. Bucky. _Bucky_.

The blonde man tells her to go to sleep, looking disappointed, and there is something she can do, when she can't do anything else- obey.

She tries, desperate to follow commands, but she does not sleep.

 

There are dreams, of course. She sees them in sharp flashes on the insides of her eyelids- there's an old ratlike man, staring down at her through round glasses, his gaze cutting- but she can tell that all he sees is a machine, a piece of flesh and metal to be fixed.

There's a little girl sobbing on the ground, skinny limbs covered in dirt. Behind her, flames are licking at a small town in the middle of nowhere and lighting up the night sky, screams of "NIE!" and " _proszę_ , nie rób tego" echoing.

"Mój ojciec," the girl cries, over and over, "mój ojciec," and finally Bucky closes her hand over her mouth to muffle the whimpers.

There's cold, and pain, and life through a frosted pane of glass; she's freezing, but the cold is blissfully numbing, and her eyes flutter shut. When they open again, she remembers nothing, and it feels good.

Then there's _light_ , bright and blinding, and Bucky shivers under the cleanliness of it, the way it promises life and love and everything that she isn't capable of. The light sparks off hair, fine and gold, and eyes the color of Brooklyn's sky in summer, and Bucky shivers again, but this time because warmth is starting at her feet and slowly traveling upwards.

"Steve?" she breathes, but the light fades into a soft glower, and someone is saying her name.

"Miss Barnes?" It's the young kind boy with the clipboard. He's long and gangling and looks like he wants to fold in on himself and disappear when she blinks at him. "They told me not to bother you, but... you were crying."

She stares at him uncomprehendingly for a long moment, half annoyed- _the warmth is gone_ \- his words not registering. Crying?

He makes a few stuttering gestures at his own face, as if to demonstrate, and she reaches up and touches her face. Wet.

She stares at him some more. Is he a technician? He doesn't seem like one- too young, for one, and too openly, well, gawky. He shuffles his feet awkwardly and stares at the ground, but he doesn't move.

He continues to stand there even when her eyes finally close, seeking but not finding comfort in the darkness.

She still doesn't sleep.

 

The next time Bucky opens her eyes, the blonde man is there. He looks sad, and for some reason that makes Bucky feel as if she's failed somehow.

"Bucky," he says, quietly and gently, and she just blinks at him. She hasn't spoken, she realizes, not since-

"Steve?" The name is startled out of her, remembering her dream, the light turning his hair into infinite shades of yellow and gold. His expression brightens, and a sense of accomplishment curls inside her.

"Bucky," he says again, but he looks happy, happy and-

_Hopeful_.

That morning, she leaves the hospital.


	3. howling ghosts, they reappear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tower is big and sleek and modern, and Bucky hates it.
> 
> Or, the one where Tony Stark should be kept away from recovering Soviet supersoldier assassins at all times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aughh this one was really hard to write... it was going to be longer but then. so sorry about the length, not that the others are novellas, by any stretch of the imagination.
> 
> i don't speak czech or welsh. my sincerest apologies for butchering two perfectly nice languages.

The tower is big and sleek and modern, and Bucky hates it.

She wants to just collapse on the floor and scream some more, but Steve's eyes- Brooklyn blue- are achingly hopeful, so she sits when he gestures and doesn't say anything, pretends to understand when he talks.

The dark-haired man comes in a little later, after a while of Steve talking and Bucky not listening. He sits down next to her, too close, and inspects her arm closely without any sort of greeting.

"Shameful," he says, shaking his head, but despite his words, he looks positively gleeful. Bucky doesn't know what to do, so she just stares straight ahead, silently cataloguing.

(- _window ten feet to the left, elevator back and to the right, balcony door in the kitchen on the right, leading to a fire escape_ -)

Now the dark-haired man is talking to Steve, quietly. Bucky hears her name a few times, with the words "arm" and "lab" and there are more but she gets stuck on the second one.

"No," she says suddenly, fiercely, standing up. She can't remember how to say what she needs to say- she tries "žádná laboratoř," but that doesn't sound right. Neither does "dim labordy," and the two men are staring and she's so _frustrated_ and she doesn't realize she's crying until Steve's expression morphs to concern.

But she hasn't said it yet, and they don't know, so they still might take her to the lab, and she can't let that happen.

She reverts to what she knows. "No," she says firmly, " _no_ ," glaring at the dark-haired man- he's the reason for all this- Steve is guiding her gently back onto the couch, saying something in a soothing tone, but Bucky is still glaring at the man because now she's found Steve again and she will not let him go.

(Not this time.)

She falls asleep like that, a heavy exhausted sleep, her head in Steve's lap and one hand curled in the bottom of his t-shirt to make sure he doesn't leave.

 

When Bucky wakes up, she's still on the sofa.

(It feels like that's all she's been doing recently- waking, sleeping, waking, eating, crying, sleeping again.)

Steve is still there, and she's not sure what she'd do if he wasn't, but he is and something that feels intensely like fondness spreads from her stomach, seeing him dozing lightly there, head tilted back and lips parted.

For a moment, her mind takes away the surrounding room, building up a completely different one in its place; small and shabby, the couch old and hard. The windows show not a view of the city but a narrow alleyway between the apartment and the little pizza place. Bucky can hear someone laughing, someone else shouting, a baby wailing, cars honking. It's loud and messy and-

And it feels good.

Bucky doesn't really understand this feeling thing yet- now, everyone's asking her how she feels. _Are you hungry? Are you tired? Does it hurt?_ But she doesn't know _how_ hunger feels, or fatigue.

(She knows pain. That one she knows, oh how she knows.)

"What _should_ it feel like?" she'd asked someone once- not a technician, a nurse. The nurse had looked horribly sad and patted Bucky on the cheek gently, saying, "You'll get there," which was utterly unhelpful but a rather nice sentiment anyway.

But this? This feels warm and happy and good and _right_. It feels like the warmth from her dream, and Steve's eyes- she'd thought of them as Brooklyn blue, she remembers.

And then Steve shifts a little on the couch and mutters something in his sleep and the walls come crashing down, the tower fading back in. All the glorious noise and streaming sunlight is gone, replaced again by the city below, its windows little yellow squares of light. She crosses to the big windows, places a hand- right, not left- on the panes and wonders, _when did my city get this big_?

**Author's Note:**

> edit: much love to my darling kelsey (i-want-some-dam-fries.tumblr.com) who found this lovely amazing art that is unrelated to this fic but is perfect and how i imagine my bucky:
> 
> http://princesswildling.tumblr.com/post/92251038083


End file.
